Sixty-four percent of the teams competing for the national title in the NCAA’s Division I men’s basketball tournament graduated at least 50 percent of their players during a six-year period, while 22 percent of the teams graduated less than 40 percent, according to an annual study of the graduation rates of teams playing in the tournament.

The report, “Keeping Score When It Counts,” is produced by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida and is based on the Graduation Success Rates calculated by the NCAA. The authors of the study are Richard Lapchick, director of the institute, and Eric Little. The institute will release the results of a separate study on graduation rates for teams competing in the women’s tournament tomorrow.

The study also highlighted disparities in the academic success of white and black basketball players. Though the gaps are “narrowing slightly,” Mr. Lapchick said in a written statement, “the ongoing and significant disparity regarding the academic success between African-American and white men’s basketball student-athletes is deeply troubling.”

Fifty-six percent of the teams playing in the tournament had at least a 10-percentage-point gap between the graduation rates of their white players and their black players, an improvement from 68 percent last year, the study found. Thirty-four percent of the teams had at least a 30-percentage-point gap, down from 49 percent in 2007.

If the tournament featured a Final Four based on the Graduation Success Rates of the teams competing, Mr. Lapchick noted, it would include Butler, Notre Dame, Purdue, and Western Kentucky. —Libby Sander